Today's Opinions

Robert Burry had a vision, and Bob Andriot saw it clearly, a vision that holds beautiful hope for downtown Shelbyville.

Mr. Andriot, a lifelong downtown businessman and property owner, and Mr. Burry, an architect, builder and restoration dreamer, have joined forces with a concept to transform one of the downtown’s most undesirable but historic eyesores, the Blue Gables, from a seedy rental property into something of vibrancy and potential.

Spring fever is supposed to arrive early in March, when you see the first robin, the bright yellow of an occasional daffodil, things green, abud and, well, warming.

Spring fever is not supposed to be a full-blown summer sweat at the strike of the vernal equinox.

It’s not as if there isn’t always plenty to talk about with basketball, politics, religion, economics, basketball, politics and, I don’t know, movies, but today we have to talk about the weather, because everyone is.

Robert Burry had a vision, and Bob Andriot saw it clearly, a vision that holds beautiful hope for downtown Shelbyville.

Mr. Andriot, a lifelong downtown businessman and property owner, and Mr. Burry, an architect, builder and restoration dreamer, have joined forces with a concept to transform one of the downtown’s most undesirable but historic eyesores, the Blue Gables, from a seedy rental property into something of vibrancy and potential.

A few weeks ago, I explained to my 10-year-old son how brackets work. I showed him the elimination process, how the winners moved one way and the losers another. I think he was more intrigued by the maze of lines than what they actually represented.

And so today I give you the NCAA Tournament, basketball’s version of a maze in which good teams get lost when their names fall on bad lines.

The city of Shelbyville’s determination to begin an aggressive crackdown on property owners who don’t follow the city’s ordinances is both strong in might and clear in hindsight.

City leaders said last week that they plan again to pursue homeowners who aren’t making required repairs in sidewalks that abut their property and that they would foreclose on property owners who are arrears in their taxes.

The emergency management leadership in Shelby County is worried about us, and so are we.

Those horrible storms that surged across Indiana and Kentucky last week – narrowly skirting Shelby County – scared the bluegrass out of us. They were not just overblown thunderstorms but powerful, twisting trains that crawled across the landscape.